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Description
Pass the bong everyone, today is getting weird. While Heuvelmans’ sea serpents have all been eccentric, the Many-Finned is absolutely surreal. Yet another basilosaurid whale (or at least an evolutionary descendant), Heuvelmans combined sightings from tropical waters with an armored, segmented carcass found in Vietnam of a creature called the Con Rit to create a large, archaic whale with segmented armor and a row of fins down its side - either extensions of the armor, as shown here, or a fleshy fringe divided into individual lobes.

Unfortunately, this sea serpent is evidence of how sloppy Heuvelmans could be with his scholarship. The Con Rit carcass was reported secondhand, 38 years after the fact. If the witness did remember it accurately (indeed, if it ever existed at all), it was probably the decayed remains of some species of bony fish. It seems that, based on this report alone, Heuvelmans decided to lump all Vietnamese reports into the Many-Finned category - despite most of them not mentioning any fins at all. Those sightings from elsewhere that do describe multiple find are probably groups of small marine animals - sharks, dolphins, porpoises, etc. - being mistaken for one large creature with multiple fins. One sighting appears to have even been a feeding group of humpback whales!

Heuvelmans classified the Many-Finned as a whale based on the idea that prehistoric whales had armor plating; however, this idea was already years out of date, having been dismissed back in the 1930s. And of course, no whale has ever been shown to have a structure like a lobed fringe on its sides; this was yet another outdated idea about the anatomy of early whales.

In short, the Many-Finned is based on nothing more than mistaken identity and sloppy research.

Description
Pass the bong everyone, today is getting weird. While Heuvelmans’ sea serpents have all been eccentric, the Many-Finned is absolutely surreal. Yet another basilosaurid whale (or at least an evolutionary descendant), Heuvelmans combined sightings from tropical waters with an armored, segmented carcass found in Vietnam of a creature called the Con Rit to create a large, archaic whale with segmented armor and a row of fins down its side - either extensions of the armor, as shown here, or a fleshy fringe divided into individual lobes.

Unfortunately, this sea serpent is evidence of how sloppy Heuvelmans could be with his scholarship. The Con Rit carcass was reported secondhand, 38 years after the fact. If the witness did remember it accurately (indeed, if it ever existed at all), it was probably the decayed remains of some species of bony fish. It seems that, based on this report alone, Heuvelmans decided to lump all Vietnamese reports into the Many-Finned category - despite most of them not mentioning any fins at all. Those sightings from elsewhere that do describe multiple find are probably groups of small marine animals - sharks, dolphins, porpoises, etc. - being mistaken for one large creature with multiple fins. One sighting appears to have even been a feeding group of humpback whales!

Heuvelmans classified the Many-Finned as a whale based on the idea that prehistoric whales had armor plating; however, this idea was already years out of date, having been dismissed back in the 1930s. And of course, no whale has ever been shown to have a structure like a lobed fringe on its sides; this was yet another outdated idea about the anatomy of early whales.

In short, the Many-Finned is based on nothing more than mistaken identity and sloppy research.